Lower part of a marble seated statue of Hygieia
Copy or adaptation of a Greek work of the 3rd or 2nd century B.C.
Hygieia, the personification of Health, was the daughter of Asklepios, the god of healing. Snakes were closely associated with both figures and were actually kept in many of the sanctuaries where the sick gathered. This Hygieia was shown feeding a gigantic serpent. The statue was once part of the collection formed in Rome in the early seventeenth century by the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.
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